The Panic Room
by VanillaSlash
Summary: "No you won't." And if Wes sounds quietly furious, it's only because he's entitled. Because Blaine is hurling himself into danger because he loves Kurt, and David, no matter what he thinks, does not love Wes. Wevid; Klaine.
1. Spider Trap

**The Panic Room**

_By: VanillaSlash_

**Rating**: T—for two, and two... for T.

**Warnings**: Some swearing, mentions of possible character death, homophobia, school shooting, violence.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own. I only pwn.

**Additional Notation**:

All Warbler names are according to Wikipedia, which is clearly never wrong. In fact, if Wikipedia so said that Glee did not exist, we would not be here right now. Lolith verily.

* * *

><p><em>Chapitre<em> I:

**Spider Trap**

Wes swears then and there that never again will he be able to play Call of Duty without freaking out exactly the same way he is now, feeling Kurt's rapidly rising and falling chest pressed to his back and Blaine glued to his side as the three take refuge in the school café.

Everything is silent.

And somehow that makes Wes even tenser. He can feel Kurt hyperventilate right in his ear and Blaine—goddammit, his _best friend_ _Blaine_—spasm with anxiety as the two cling to each other for dear life.

_They won't hurt you, they won't hurt you_, they won't hurt you, Blaine is mouthing against the slender throat of his boyfriend, and Wes respectfully averts his eyes as Kurt practically climbs into his best friend's lap, pressing their bodies impossibly close.

"We can't stay here," Wes finally speaks, and he's proud that his voice only wavers once. "The café is in the center of school and there are too many entrances. We're sitting ducks if we stay."

Blaine meets his eye, and it's almost enough to make the Warbler Council head flinch away because the only other time Blaine's look at him like this was after an intense nightmare just after Blaine had transferred here and they'd become very close indeed. The only difference is that now he's got Kurt—_"I really think I love him, Wes, I just... I'm so _scared_…"—_tucked under his chin, staring up at Wes with that same helpless look that pleads for him to _do something_; but twice as terrified because Kurt, who was all Blaine had _ever_ wanted since before the two had really even met, is also in danger.

"Where should we go?"

Wes opens his mouth, gaping at them while trying to assemble the answer when they hear it:

A crack that's terrifyingly not far away at all—a few halls down at _most_—like a gunshot.

Because it _is_ a gunshot.

All three of them press together as they hear screams from the floors above them—but not their floor. No one has been shot. Not yet.

"_Move_!" Wes hisses, pale-faced as he tries to shove the other two into motion.

Kurt tumbles from between Blaine's legs with a thud that shakes Wes's eardrums, but Blaine is on him immediately, tugging Kurt to his feet and yanking him along as he and Wes flee left, towards South Hall, panic blinding him to the racket they make in their escape and the sickening reality that South and East halls were full of mostly-locked doors at this time of day.

"Come _on_," Wes growls, jiggling a nearby unisex bathroom doorknob desperately, shooting harried looks back at the direction they've come from. "_Come on_, we need somewhere with a _lock_ on the inside!"

"The choir room," Blaine's voice hisses.

Wes glances back at him over his shoulder and has to do a double take because the first time he can't distinguish which one's Blaine with Kurt wrapped up in his arms.

"_I think… I think I'm going to marry him one day," Blaine sighed, a ridiculous grin spreading across his face. His phone was out, and Wes didn't have to see the screen to know that he was reading over his text history from Kurt._

_Still, this was news to Wes, whose mechanical pencil led snapped audibly at the announcement. He sat and stared for so long that it ended up being David who had to lead this particular conversation._

"_Wow, Blaine, congrats," David said._

_And that was fine; David really was more sensitive to other people's emotions—and, okay, he got a lot of practice with Wes, who could actually be really evil when the urge struck. But Blaine was one of those people that fell in love with the _idea_ of love—not necessarily the person._

_So Wes just shined it on: "Use protection until you _mutually_ decide to have gay babies," he advised, ducking the pillow Blaine retaliated with._

_But he didn't believe it; not _really_._

_It was nearly three days past that mark when Blaine showed up in David's and his room, eyes red and heart so obviously aching. They knew he'd disappeared to Lima for reasons unknown, and he never did say why. He looked small: small like the first day his soon-to-be best friends found him wandering lost in North Hall, overwhelmed and with no clue where the mathematics block could even possibly be._

_Beside Wes, David set his book down in concern. "Blaine?"_

_Blaine looked terrified. "Oh g—oh god, I'm in love with him."_

_And Wes believed him. _

They'd made it to the chemistry classroom when it happens.

Unfortunately, the only reason they can get in in the first place is because Jeff managed to blow the lock clean off during a rather exciting acids lab. Wes makes a mental note to kill him for it later.

They haven't run into anyone else the entire way there; the hall remains unnervingly quiet and Wes can feel an unwelcome, paranoid pressure rising in the back of his head. Nevertheless, he closes the door and slumps against a nearby desk as the stress rolls over him.

He's thinking of all the paths they can take to get to the Warbler's rehearsal room—thankfully it has a lock and will certainly be open—when he notices.

The doorknob is turning.

And when it slips open, Wes doesn't hold back.

Wes is not a violent person. He's controlling and a leader—but only because he expects others to follow his lead to the point that it's everyone _else_ who feels stupid if they fail to. So his own surprise to find his fist colliding with the intruder's face is probably only second to the intruder himself, who utters a long, loud stream of colorful curse words at the abrupt pain.

It ends with: "_—fucking hell_, Wes!"

"_David_," the Asian boy gasps, and that's when they all truly notice each other and feel a mutual sharp shot of relief.

His best friend's uniform is all out of sorts. Sweat dampens the collar and the tie is nowhere to be seen. But otherwise, he's okay, and Wes nearly feels his stomach drop out with relief because if he's been terrified for Blaine and Kurt—and, okay, _himself_, he's not really afraid to admit that—then he's been exactly—_paralyzing_—that for David.

David slumps against the wall, clutching his bruised eye. "Shit, am I glad to see you… with the one eye I have left."

"Sorry."

Blaine and Kurt are talking; are gripping David in an intense show of relief that Wes can't allow himself—not _yet_, because there will be time for that later; because he'll get them out of this.

David finally forces words out in a whisper with Blaine's nails digging painfully into his bicep but he doesn't notice. "What's _happening_?"

Wes stares back in frustrating helplessness that doesn't suit him _at all_. And, really, what is he supposed to say that David doesn't already know? The reason why all of Dalton lies in this ambiguous limbo-lockdown? Maybe address Kurt and Blaine, who have been unnervingly silent in a way that Kurt and Blaine really _never_ are.

He settles for something simple.

"Don't play stupid with me, David."

And it's final.

The unspoken confirmation is the last thing David wants to hear, because, on some level, he _does_ already know. His dark grip falls from his face, and both eyes (one already swelling) focus on Wes with such intensity that the Asian boy can't help but flush a little because, seriously, was this _really_ the time for that?

"_Oh_," David breaths at last. And yeah, Wes knows he knows. Wes also knows that David wants to get closer, but his own tense glare warns that the outcome won't be nice if he does, because Wes can't deal with _those_ thoughts on top of everything else.

Those chocolate eyes dart to him and snap back to Blaine's face so fast that it practically didn't even happen. "Where did you guys come from? I haven't—haven't seen anyone. There were footsteps—and that _shot_ in East Hall—but it was so fast and—"

It's fast and sudden. There's absolutely no transition; one minute the lights are on, and in the next, it's total blackness. The iced-over windows offer the dimmest of help and a swell of chaos seems to rise in the school.

People—up one floor, down three halls, _everywhere_—are letting our startled curses. Someone runs right past their classroom hiding space, and there's a sharp, foreboding sense of anonymity that settles in them all. _Friends_ are out there, fleeing each other, invisible to each other. But there's something else out there too; and that keeps them dead silent until the footsteps and sounds fade away.

Hot panic rises in Wes's stomach. He feels nauseous_. I can't do this I can't do this—fuck, I can't do this!_

But out loud, he says: "If they messed with the power, they're in a different hall than before."

Kurt sneers. He's close enough for Wes to see the flash of his teeth. "…Great. They're moving around the school."

"I'll check to see if the coast is clear," Blaine announces firmly, his shadowed figure straightening with a bit of unbalance but largely ignoring Kurt's attempts to tug him back.

"Stop being ridiculous, Blaine, it's better if we're not wandering around aimlessly!"

"Not aimless," Blaine dissents, kissing Kurt swiftly.

Normally Wes wouldn't mind the serious PDA, but with David in the room, it's a little bit more than he's strong enough for. He stands too.

"I'll check towards the other end of the hall to be sure."

"_No_!" David says in a noise level closer to a normal conversational volume than the feverish whispers they'd been using. He quickly adjusts his tone. "_I'll_ go with Blaine."

"No you _won't_."

And if Wes sounds quietly furious, it's only because he's entitled. Because Blaine is hurling himself into danger because he _loves_ Kurt, and David, no matter what he thinks, does _not_ love Wes.

Finally, David subsides. "I'll stay with Kurt."

Wes nods tightly, stepping after Blaine.

It's hard avoiding Blaine's speculative gaze in the loosely lit hall, glowing by only the windows' light, but Wes knows he has to if he doesn't want to see the intense bewilderment and pity shining there. Certainly Wes doesn't want the pity—there's nothing to _sympathize_ for! And he tells Blaine as much.

"Are you and David having a fight?" Blaine speculates anyway.

Wes considers telling him to save his sympathy instead for Kurt, who is more unfortunate than he had realized having to deal with Blaine's obliviousness, but graciously (barely) refrains. Wes tries to shake him off while craning his neck slowly to squint around the corner, finding a deserted hall going north-west, but Blaine has worked himself into a well-meaning state and begins:

"David really cares about you—"

"Do you think I'm worried about _that!_?" David _not_ caring is the _last_ thing he's worried about; the chocolate-skinned boy has made himself quite clear. He's decisive in a way that Wes is not, passionate in a way that Wes can't be, and in lov—in _feelings_ in a way that Wes refuses.

The problem is that Wes has always been very careful with himself. He thinks very highly of himself and respects himself with every ounce of his blood. So to risk himself and the comfortable life that he's built up around him for someone _else_? It's not even an option.

"You're tensing around each other," Blaine says slowly. "David—"

"Will you _check_ your _side_, _Blaine_?" Wes tells himself that it isn't guilt he feels as Blaine stares and then walks away; it's not guilt because Blaine is being nosy and kind of deserves it. And he doesn't turn away from Blaine and walk back towards the classroom because he thinks that Blaine might _really_ look at him and suddenly recognize that same _difference_ in Wes that he has in himself. The difference that shines when he looks at Kurt and that surfaced when Blaine realized just how desperately in love he was.

If Blaine looks Wes in the eye right then, Blaine will know everything; and Wes wouldn't be able to take any of it back.

Kurt has his reasons for acting the way he does. Wes just hasn't guessed them for now, lingering outside the door with a hand brushing the doorknob and the two of them talking quietly inside.

"I don't want to die a virgin," he hears Kurt confess, seeing him clutch David's sleeve through the crack; David crushes him in a hug unhesitatingly.

"You won't. I promise. This will all be over soon, and you and Blaine will have thousands of gay babies and name every third one after me or Wes," David says roughly into his ear. He pulls Kurt even closer because this is the guy that Blaine wants for the rest of his life if all that Katie Perry is anything to go by, and David will protect whatever his best friend wants to his death.

Hopefully fate won't call him on that, though.

Quite suddenly, Blaine pops up behind Wes. "The hallway's clear. We should go."

"Right."

Before they can, and with all the expectancy of (skipping metaphors) none at all, an ear-shaking shatter splits the air in two followed by a ground-trembling crash. It's too much to pin a distance on, and David is probably so far gone that he doesn't stop to try. So the next thing Wes is treated to is the chemistry lab door banging open—practically in his face—and David _really_ crashing into him with a look of dread and panic that quickly switches with intense relief when he sees Wes sprawled out, groaning on the stone floor under him.

Wes is noticeably less pleased. "_David_, you're in my _bubble_."

The tall boy winces. "Sorry."

Someone is yanking impatiently on his collar. "_Go, go, go_!" He recognizes Kurt's hiss and scrambles to his feet, nearly tripping over David again. The dark-skinned boy remedies this by taking Wes by the waist in a gesture of unnecessary intimacy, and together they're all darting down the corridor.

Footsteps are crashing overhead and a door slams a world away, but as Wes's sides start to burn—still being whisked along by David—they suddenly pull around a last corner, and there's the Warbler's room. Wes doesn't think he's ever been happier to see it in his life as he grabs the handle and yanks.

It's heartstoppingly locked.

The Asian boy hears himself swear furiously as turns on his heel, eyes darting desperately around the hall for an idea which turns out to be unnecessary. Low murmurs waft from the closed threshold, causing David to finally jerk his hand back in surprise.

"_Wes_," a voice breathes from behind the heavy oak, and they can hear the tumblers clamoring inside the first lock, but a thud and muffled swear come before the second one does.

Now it's Thad's deep, demanding voice leaking through the crack of the door: "If you _are_ Wes, I asked you something you didn't want to answer last night. What did you tell me?" the senior barks.

No less than five different voices uttered five different furious curses.

"They're in fucking danger, Thad!" Wes can pinpoint Nick's outraged voice and a scuffle breaks out on the other side.

"We're _all_ in fucking danger!" Thad's voice hisses with authority. He redirects to Wes: "_Answer_ the question."

"I told you… that I always did," the Asian boy replies primly, smoothing the lapel of his blazer anxiously and glancing around under three pairs of probing eyes. The hall remains abandoned, but he still doesn't plan to stay out here, and he doesn't have to.

The Warbler's choir room door is yanked open viciously and the four missing member are hauled inside with efficiency as the door is firmly shut behind them; the two locks are set and a chain leashes the door.

Wes doesn't even break stride. "Who's missing?"

"Who _isn't_?" Thad gripes, clutching the back of an armchair anxiously. His voice is slightly less strained, however; perhaps finding a better grip together with the reunion of his fellow Council.

"A bunch of the guys were supposed to have a study group in the library—"

"There was a gunshot," Nick interrupts tensely.

"Has anyone gone for help?"

"Have you _noticed_ the five foot wall of _ice_ outside?" Wes snaps back.

It's not untrue. The snowfall nearly comes up to the first-floor window of the room—a product of nearly a week of snowfall that hasn't shown any inclination to let up. It's a death wish to venture out the five miles down the road to town.

"_Fine_. 9-1—?"

"Do _you_ have your phone on you?" A pointless question. Cell phones are strictly banned outside the dormitories during the weekday.

"I'm sure someone called," Thad says uneasily.

"This is like that _movie_," Trent hisses in revolted reverence.

"_What_—?"

"With the fucking _axe_!" He's nearly beside himself. "The psycho running around the hotel with a fucking _axe_ and the creepy little ki—there's _always_ a creepy little kid—!"

"If I may intercept your butchered rendition of perhaps the _entire_ Shining plot," Kurt scathes from where he is, "you aren't really _helping_."

"Oh because you're doing _so mu_—"

"_Watch_ what you say next to him, Trent." Blaine's shoulders are tense. It's clear whose side he'll jump in on should things escalate to a fist fight. Over Trent's shoulder, Nick trades threatening glares with Blaine. Without really realizing it, the two parties are gravitating towards each other with agitated energy.

David immediately jumps forward. "Knock it off, _now_!" he warns, a raised finger pointing at each of them in turn at he speaks back and forth. "We're all tense, but we _will_ have order here!"

"I liked them better falling asleep during Warbler meetings," Wes tells when David settles in beside him. A few boys stare gimlet-eyed at the Council table where the two are seated, but no one has ambition enough to protest, considering Wes all but rules the group with an iron fist.

"It's not how I thought they'd lose their grip."

"In a crisis, you see the parts of people that they'll never let you see. The raw parts that they haven't worked through yet…" Wes smiles grimly. "We haven't seen anything."

David lowers his voice conspiratorially. "I don't know, Wes, something's weird, don't you think that? Why hasn't anyone come? Someone must have a cell on them or be in the dorms or something."

Wes's coal-black eyes shift askance. He takes in David completely, considering everything he says and calculating everything that could come from it.

There's brilliance in Wes's eyes.

And utter adoration in David's.

* * *

><p><em>There is a morbid lack of Wavid around here, my fellow people.<em>

؏_Aurora_


	2. Wes's Secret

**Rating**: T—for trollin'.

**Disclaimer**: Mine, Glee is not. Sad, this is. Angst, I.

* * *

><p><em>Chapitre II:<em>

**Wes's Secret**

Someone jiggles the doorknob from the other side, finds it locked and groans. A fist hits the solid oak.

Wes knows that voice.

"_Jeff_," Nick moans in relief, nearly crashing into two other boys as he pelts towards the door.

Wes is already there, though, and with an anxious flick of his neck, David reads him. David catches Nick en route to the door, trapping his arms and ignoring all protests.

Wes catches Kurt's arm on his way to the entrance and places him under his own dark gaze. "You have to ask him something. Something from yesterday."

For a minute it's nothing, but eventually it's something:

"What did you tell me last night?" Kurt asks at length.

Jeff hesitates for a moment, and everyone hears it. Finally:

"I told you… that I really, _really_ love my mom a—a lot, Kurt," Jeff says thickly through the door, and Kurt nearly lunges for the door anyway because Jeff isn't allowed to say goodbye yet. He doesn't need to leave a message like this because at 4:30 precisely, the Warbler's practice will be over and Jeff will be driving home for the weekend to tell his mom these things _himself_.

Wes's tightened grip on his shoulder makes him look up.

_Well?_ Wes mouths.

And Kurt is frozen; doesn't know what to do because last night Jeff had been heckling Kurt playfully about how far he'd gotten with Blaine as he shoved things hodge-podge into his suitcase for the long weekend, a cookie in his mouth. His mother hadn't even come up.

It's too long, though.

Suddenly and with no warning except the fact that they've all been dreading it, a gunshot curses at them through the door.

Wes thinks he's gone deaf. He can't hear anything but a vague rushing sound pounding in his ears, and he sees Nick's mouth moving and tears and blots of red color appearing on his face. He doesn't hear anything, though.

He feels _David_. Feels him across the room, and it's the stupidest thing because all he can think of is how he's actually really sorry about punching him because David's eyes are usually so beautiful and now they're just making Wes feel guilty.

_David_ makes Wes feel guilty.

The sound rushes back in.

"—oh god, we've got to get Jeff!" Nick is hyperventilating, struggling so hard in David's strong arms that it takes a suddenly-moving Blaine and barely-breathing Trent to hold him down too. "Get _the fuck off_, David!"

Wes is moving before he knows it. In three great strides, he's in the struggle, pushing it back towards the couch Trent had abandoned. There's swearing and spitting-mad shouts—but eventually they get Nick on it. Wes gets on after him, straddling Nick to pin him further as the other two hold the hysterical boy's legs.

"LISTEN TO ME!" Wes shouts, forcing Nick to meet his eyes with wide, insensible ones. "NICK!"

"GET OFF, WES!" Nick roars, bucking wildly. He nearly unseats Wes, who feels a hand at the small of his back, keeping him balanced.

"HE'S DEAD, OKAY?" Nick freezes, sucking in a startled breath with his eyes—finally focused—drawn, hypnotized, to Wes. "He's gone," Wes says, softer now.

The body beneath him trembles, and Wes knows what's next. Carefully, both eyes trained on Nick still, he slides off.

Nick's breath finally releases in a sob full of anguish. It rises to a loud, unearthly wail almost immediately, as if the release of pressure on the shocked boy's chest has let his heart spill out through his ribs. Tears are falling hot and fast down his cheeks.

Wes turns his back and walks away.

The next few minutes are unnervingly quiet. Apart from Nick's occasional sniffles, no one dares make a sound. Most of the Warblers have relocated to surround the couch, offering their silent support to their grieving member, all the while grieving themselves.

Wes keeps himself slightly apart; he's no good at comforting—and worse at _being_ comforted; David looks like he has a few intentions along those lines. Privately, Wes thinks he shouldn't bother. Bringing people to tears didn't faze him anymore. Not after all the ways he's used it to keep David away.

Someone separates from the group and stands, breaking Wes's line of thought.

"Where do you think you're going?" His own voice sounds distant; detached.

Kurt's delicate hand is on the doorknob before anyone provides the initiative of stopping him. His blue eyes glint unnervingly. "We can't leave him out there."

Wes is on him in nothing flat, startling the hell out of Trent, who snaps to attention as Wes pins Kurt to the locked door.

"_No one_—" his eyes are on Kurt, but he commands the room's attention, "—opens that door unless _I_ tell them to…. Understood?"

Thad's posture shifts subtly from shocked to defensive—an obvious reaction to his authority being voided. Wes doesn't acknowledge him though and Thad doesn't speak.

Kurt's expression is cold and his voice is clipped: "_Perfectly_." Either way, he slips gracefully from Wes's slackened grip and crosses the room to Blaine's waiting arms. Wes doesn't care enough to watch him go, and instead presses his back to the door, slowly sliding down it. When he reaches the floor, the heels of his palms press against his eyelids.

"Wes?"

Rattlesnake-black eyes snap open and his hands fall to the ground. He watches as David sinks slowly next to him, back pressing delicately into the door—mindful of what is on the other side.

David, who knows him better than anyone could possibly hope to know anyone else, is staring at him with a sort of forced distance. It's not anything Wes wants to see, so he buries his face between his knees silently.

It's only when a warm arm wraps around his shoulders that everything comes thoroughly apart. His neck snaps up, eyes glaring.

"_Don't_," he warns.

David lets out an exasperated noise that does something funny to Wes's heart.

"Just let me _touch you_!" And David doesn't even have the presence of mind to keep his voice down, so the words echo through the room and everyone hears. This is exactly what Wes _doesn't_ want as he flushes red, because—

"—_we can't all be like you, David, throwing affection around like it's going out of style!" Wes snapped, nails digging tensely into the flesh of his palms. They were sweating and shaking and it was all because David was looking at him like _that_. In _that_ way that sent a rush of dizzy excitement through his veins and made him forget all about his girlfriend or David's girlfriend or _anyone's_ girlfriend because it was just DavidDavidDavid._

"_Well we can't all be cold like you, Wes!" David fired back, frustratedly pacing the floor as opposed to Wes's rigidly straight posture as he sat. "I can't just not feel!"_

"_What's there to feel?" Wes asked testily._

_It was the wrong question. David suddenly lunged forward, and for one wild moment, Wes thought the dark-skinned boy might punch him; might have preferred it, even. Anything would be better than this swirling storm of guilt and hot affection burning in his chest for this strong, beautiful boy that wanted him _so badly_._

_Instead of violence, David took both Wes's hands in his, and placed them on his own uniform-clad chest. David was warm with a fast-beating heart and an intense look in his eye as he pressed his forehead against Wes's._

"_You're driving me crazy, Wes. You know that, right?"_

_Wes knew._

David doesn't wait for an answer, and instead grabs Wes's hand within his own. It's probably the least romantic thing Wes has ever let him get away with; the shorter boy's hand is limp like a dead fish in his own.

And everyone's staring, but pretending they're not.

It's intensely awkward.

Finally, Thad says something, because he can't _not_.

"Is there something we should know about here?"

Wes jumps on him, relishing a target. "In terms of minding your own business, _no_, there's _nothing_."

Thad flushes. Wes can nearly feel Thad's retort on the tip of his own tongue, but the words never pass lips. The entire thing's cut off by an unexpected sigh.

"Don't do this. Not now." Blaine closes his eyes on the other side of the room, pressing his face into his lover's slender neck. Kurt arches up into it, baring his throat trustingly to Blaine's teeth. The black-haired boy just turns his head to blow hot, sweet breaths into the shell of Kurt's ear. The brunet squirms delightedly.

Wes's eyes are repelled by the sight.

There had been a time—not long ago at all, really—that Wes could look at his friends' love and feel content. More recently, this has become an impossible task: mainly because Wes seems only to have the luck to see such displays of affection when David is within touching distance.

And David, whether he's meeting Wes's eyes or not, has a smoldering gaze that feels like the most pleasurable fire on Wes's skin; this time is no exception.

Wes shivers.

* * *

><p>It happens with a loud, rumbling shudder of metal and old wood.<p>

It happens when Wes's cool hand is still clutched protectively in David's, and he's intensely aware of the chocolate-skinned boy's breath on his neck.

And when it happens, it's almost immediately, intensely cold.

Kurt tenses in Blaine's grip, eyes flashing with alertness and a promise that this won't end easily. "What's that noise?"

David frowns too, eyes tracking the dim walls to where the sound seems to be emitting just behind Thad's head.

"What if the shooter's sneaking through the air vents?" Trent blurts out opposite them, but the scathing look Wes shoots him immediately after serves to swiftly silence this claim.

Either way, Thad is quick to move from his spot, eying the wood-paneled wall behind the couch with certain suspicion. The noise is getting louder, more insistent, and now everyone's standing. They're nervous and just when they're thinking that maybe Trent's suggestion has a bit of merit, there's a loud whirring noise, and then it slowly dies off.

And Kurt suddenly speaks. "Oh my Gaga—I think… I think that was the—"

Wes watches him squirm from Blaine's arms and dart towards one of the grates where the furnace spits out warm air to cancel out the chill of the winter blizzard brewing outside. The countertenor flashes his hand out in front of it for a few seconds before faltering, and withdrawing it to his side.

"It's… gone," he hears Kurt say, unsure.

Thad gets it before Wes does, but he acts like he doesn't all the same. "What's gone?"

Kurt rolls his eyes impatiently. "What do you think?"

"Oh god, we're going to freeze in this meat locker," Trent deadpans.

"That's not true," Blaine assures them all before pausing. "Right?"

"No, of course not," Kurt agrees. A sigh of relief seems to reverberate around the room. "We'll just need to share body heat."

Wes chokes.

"Can't you, you know," Trent flails his arms around, "fix it?"

Kurt levels a look his way that states in no uncertain terms, _bitch please I'm dying to slap you right now_. "Fix it how? I don't even know where the furnace room _is_."

"Looks like it's time to get friendly, then!" Blaine concludes with too much cheer. Latching on to Kurt a second later reveals why.

Trent makes a hostile noise a few feet away from them. "What? No! How is that going to help anything? We don't even have blankets in here!"

"Your C- in biology is showing," Wes goads.

David casts him a reproving look, and Wes begins to lose interest in the conversation.

"It works just fine," David promises Trent coaxingly. "Look—" Before Wes knows what's going on, he's being pulled into David's lap.

If Wes had been a lesser person, his face would be the bright red flush that matches the rush of hormones racing through him. He's sitting on David's _lap_. His _hips_ are pressed flushed against David's. He could _feel_ David's—

Wes's thoughts come to a screaming stop, and the flush he's been fighting is starting to creep up his cheeks.

It's a mark of how rarely Wes becomes flustered that the color rising to his face is immediately taken for the beginnings of a rage, the highlights of those takers being, hands-down, Blaine and Thad: the former manages a remarkable impression of a fish while the latter looks downright alarmed, eyes wide as though watching an unstoppable train wreck in which David would absolutely be the fatality. Wes was nothing if not the most self-aware-of-his-own-personal-space person either of them had ever met, so when Wes merely looks away disinterestedly, Thad makes plans to petition David for sainthood.

Blaine draws a different conclusion. "This room is driving us all nuts," he announces adamantly.

Wes silently agrees.

* * *

><p>Wes counts two sets of footsteps above them.<p>

"It's two," he murmurs to David, pressed to his side. They're all at a standstill, staring at the ceiling with all the anticipation of one attempting to discern a friend from a foe. "It's not—we should…"

David grimaces with understanding. "What if there's more than one of them in Dalton, Wes? We're just drawing unnecessary attention to ourselves."

"We've done that already," he answers vaguely, alluding to what everyone knows but no one will say is the dead body sprawled in an undetermined state outside their door. He's shifting through a closet on one side of the room now, and immerges with a broom. "We need _help_ … and they need us too."

He almost makes Blaine do it, since he does so _love_ jumping around on furniture. In any case, he perches on the arm of a sofa and pauses, before rapping loudly at the ceiling with the handle of the broom.

Silence. They've stopped moving upstairs, and no one's breathing downstairs. And then—

A deliberate, hesitant foot knocks back three times.

Wes hesitates too, but they're already this far and have mutually given their positions away, so he knocks again.

There's a minute wherein the people upstairs are probably discussing whether or not to follow the anonymous ally.

"This is a risk," Kurt states the obvious tensely.

"It's a _calculated_ risk," Wes answers smoothly.

"Whatever you're taking to get off your control freak kick, keep it up," Nick mutters in the background. It's the first thing he's said since Jeff was shot, and everyone is very still. No one reprimands the words—least of all Wes, who can't quite bring himself to turn and face Nick anyway.

The wait is quiet. Untill—

"_Shit_," they hear someone gasp, muffled through the door and down the hall.

Thad, by the door, suddenly looks like he's realizing that corpses aren't the best lure for potential allies.

There's what sounds like a minor scuffle outside before someone says, "come on, _come on_, we've got to check," and there's footsteps coming closer and closer before—a knock on the door.

"Who's there?" Thad says ironically.

"It's—_fuck_—it's James and Flint, okay? Will you open the door? _God_."

Wes doesn't hear the rest. His eyes are locked with Thad, whose slowly working out what Wes wants. When he gets it, it shows.

"Stop being a control freak, Wes!"

"I wasn't _asking_ you anything," he warns in turn. "I'm _telling_ you. _Move_."

No one looks so inclined as to tell the Asian boy what to do, so Thad is very much on his own. Nick, his usual running buddy when it comes to attempting a bulldoze over Wes's plans, remains exactly where he was after the bullet took his best friend; huddled on the floor, hands clutching his hair.

Thad subsides; barely. "I want to see Jeff," he whispers, mindful of Nick. "He was my _friend_, Wes."

"No," Wes says firmly, standing between him and the door. "No one looks. I'm serious."

Whether it's respect for Wes or Jeff or himself, he doesn't know. Thad concedes, though, and Wes likes to think that the glance he sends back at the other boy as he moves away is gratitude.

Wes breaths out. And opens the door.

What he expects to see, he doesn't see. And it's too hard to call if it's better this way.

Seeing Jeff like—like _that_… Wes never wanted to see _that_. But the ominous trail of blood smeared in a painted path that drags down the darkening corridor and rounds the corner is somehow just as sickening.

The door is suddenly slammed right in front of him, and he realizes that the newcomers are in already and he's totally missed it.

"What the _hell_ happened out there!"

What _had_ happened? It suddenly wasn't very clear cut at all. The drag marks in the hallway could have meant anything… and Wes isn't sure if he's ready to follow that bloody trail around the last curve of the hall.

But since Wes doesn't know for sure and can't prove anything, he doesn't reveal this as David haltingly explains the situation. The new arrivals don't know enough to say anything either.

And so Wes feels the secret of what _isn't_ outside the room weigh heavily on his chest.

* * *

><p>It's hard to feel animosity towards someone who generally generates that feeling in you when blood is visible. At least Wes thinks this way after seeing James, who he knows for a fact complains to Thad that Wes is giving him bitch-faces during Warbler meetings, with a startling amount of red dripping down his forearm.<p>

"Let me see," Kurt demands, pushing James gently into a chair. There's a line of blood running down Flint's face from probably the same incident, but it's not nearly as bad as this:

Wes really thinks he might throw up at the long, curved shard of glass sticking out of James's forearm.

"The glass on the second floor—West Hall—" James panted, pressing himself against the couch, wincing at Kurt's touch. "_Totally_ shattered, all out. With a shot."

"We didn't hear a second gunshot," Blaine says quietly.

"It's crazy," James tells him, "this is all crazy."

Kurt stands after nearly five minutes of carefully probing and observing the sliver. "I'm afraid to take it out. We could nick a major artery under even the best circumstances."

Wes fixes his eyes on the window, laced with snow and dark now. The few shafts of sunlight that had made it through the blizzard have long-since vanished—a thick darkness taking over the sky. Now all Wes sees is his reflection; hair slightly frazzled and nerves overtly so. There's dried blood smeared across his left cheek—probably from a cut he didn't realize Nick gave him in the throes of shock.

"Where is everyone else?" Flint asks.

Wes glances over at him but Kurt answers: "We don't know."

Flint slides down to the floor, looking exhausted. Wes knows it's too much for one day. "Look," he says, and everyone does. "It's got to be three in the morning or something by now. Let's just… I don't know, _sleep_. Even if we don't want to."

James looks horrified by the prospect. "Are you kidding me? What if they break down that door while we're getting our z's on!"

"Fucking crazy axe man..." Trent mutters in the background.

Wes pointedly ignores that and addresses James directly: "The door that has three locks and is build two inches thick of oak? I don't _think_ so. Face it, gentlemen… we're in a panic room."

And no one thinks anything different.

* * *

><p><em>Why you no nice-nice, Wes? (Rage face)<em>

؏_Aurora_


	3. The Trail

Rating: T—yeah it is.

Disclaimer: I wished I owned a Chris Colfer plushie or something. He's adorable. I sound like a creep; but so does everyone who just agreed with me! And I don't own Glee, or something.

* * *

><p>Chapitre III:<p>

**The Trail**

"_Wes," David said with determination, "I lov—"_

"_Don't." Wes was breathing hard as though he'd just run several miles, face pale and giving off a generally frantic air. "Don't say it—that word—David. I'm serious, don't, or we can't be friends anymore."_

_Because if he couldn't control so many things in his life—including who he loved—then he sure as hell would control who could love him. Even as he made the logic, however, he knew it was a lost cause; threatening David not to say it wouldn't remove the helplessly taken look his best friend was shooting him from being burned into his mind. And telling David not to say it wouldn't stop his palpating heart beating wildly in his chest at David's proximity and how he smelled so _good_—_

"_Okay." The African-American boy raised his hands disarmingly, taking a step back. "Okay, Wes. It's okay."_

_Wes didn't believe that for a second._

Wes jolts awake with a sharp intake of breath, dizzy and disoriented for a moment before the reality of the situation begins to sink in once more.

They're in the Warbler's room.

They're in Dalton.

And that door was the only thing standing between them and the dark curtain of death.

It's no easier to accept the second time around, and Wes embraces himself with a ragged sigh only to feel an arm that he's not noticed before tighten its hold around his hips.

"David?" Wes whispers cautiously.

A soft snore answers him. The black-haired teen exhales slowly, leaning back on the couch. "I really hate your girlfriend."

There's sudden shifting, and a drawn-out breath.

"Wes," David sighs tiredly, "you're _exhausting_."

The Council leader purses his lips, listening to the soft snores around them. "Sorry."

There's a shift of fabric and David turns on his side so that they're nearly nose to nose, breathing each other's breath and drowning in each other's heat. His arm doesn't release its gentle hold.

"Remember the last time we were this far away?"

Wes doesn't know if he means the distance between their bodies or this distance in their relationship; he nods almost imperceptibly to both. For both, it's the same answer.

"_I love you, Wes! Don't you _get_ it? I'm crazy, stupidly, agonizingly in love with you, and I think you're smart and beautiful and you're what I want, Wes! You're what I _need_. I can't stand you having a girlfriend and I can't take knowing what you're doing when you leave with her!"_

"I have to tell you something." Wes doesn't know where he's going with this, but it's out before he has time to think it through.

David's breath is strangled in his throat; he presses a finger to Wes's lips. "Please… if it's not what I want to hear, just… just wait. Don't say it now. _Please_."

Wes closes his eyes. And opens them: "Come on," he whispers, moving away from David's intense mocha eyes as quietly as possible. He gets carefully to his feet, feeling David follow unhesitant and trusting behind him.

David will follow Wes anywhere.

It's a tense navigation around Thad, who's sharing heat with Nick—even in his sleep, Jeff's best friend looks pale and nauseous—but eventually they make it to the door. David's eyes widen and he looks about to speak, but then Wes levels him with a long look and, without breaking eye contact, quietly slides the first lock open.

"Wes," David breathes, hands shaking.

The second lock slips out.

"_Wes_."

The third. And Wes reaches for the doorknob. It clicks.

A hand grips the doorknob on top of his, and suddenly pitch-black eyes are locking on with dark coco. David starts to talk: "_Wes_, you're strong and I… _feel that thing for you_ for making us not look. I don't… know if _I'm_ strong enough to see Jeff like that."

The only thing Wes can process is the regret he feels for forbidding David to use the word L-O-V-E. The rest is just a hazy pleasure of David's voice washing over him and the skin touching his.

"You're strong," Wes replies, "because you've always matched me. And for this, you're also strong enough, even if I'm sorry for asking you to be."

David's grip tightens over his. There's total tension as the door slides open, and Wes pokes his head out to take the first look. The scene's the same as it ever was: that trail of blood leading sickeningly out of sight, and nothing's moving; no sounds are being made.

Wes exhales and tries to release the doorknob. David won't let him.

"David, you have to let me go."

"I can't seem to ever do that very well."

"You never seem to _try_."

David makes a bitter noise in the back of his throat. "It's no picnic falling in lo—in _feelings_ with you, Wes. If you don't think I didn't try everything to take it all back, you're wrong."

And even if Wes has been saying it all along—has asked David to do it—it still hurts that David could regret lovi—being in _feelings_ with him so much. His heart gives a painful lurch, and Wes is struck with a sudden wave of recklessness. And so, slipping out the door, he drags his best friend with him, viciously wrestling his heart back into its proper place in his chest from where it felt like it rose up to his throat.

David is positively gaping at the scene. They're in the dead-center of the hallway, though, so Wes drags him into a small alcove opposite the choir room door that shields them from view. It's a tight, cramped space; they're breathing each other's breath, swallowing each other's heat.

David finally composes himself enough to speak.

"Jeff's…" he looks searchingly at Wes, who knows only as much and shrugs in turn. David's dark lips curve in a snarl. "What, are they playing with the dead now?"

Wes doesn't know.

David's eyes suddenly widen, and he draws a sharper breath. "Wes… if Jeff is alive…"

Wes hasn't even thought of that, and jerks his head up sharply. "Are you kidding me?" he demands, defensive. "Did you happen to notice all that _blood_?"

He knows David well enough to know when words are being chosen carefully, and they are. "Not letting us look… you weren't wrong, but…"

"I _wasn't_ wrong."

"Look, Wes—"

"He's gone, David! Just let it go!" Wes explodes. "I don't even know why I showed you this!"

"I know why. It's because you still trust me," David said pointedly, "even when you're trying not to."

Wes clutches his friend's sleeves with absolutely no intentions whatsoever, but it's better to hold on to something with David's face that close and seeming to get closer. "Don't."

"'Don't'," David echos shrewdly, "when your pulling me closer says 'do'?"

"_Don't_," Wes pleads.

David clings to him. "I'm sorry, Wes. I'm sorry, so sorry."

"_Don't_."

"Are you telling me, or are you telling you?"

Wes flees.

* * *

><p>In this, David and Wes stand firmly opposite each other. Nothing could be more obvious the next morning, which is intensely uncomfortable as a result, but to the same end, nothing is less obvious as to <em>why<em>.

"This is ridiculous," Blaine announces when Wes continues to be infuriatingly noncommittal only to correct himself a second later: "_You're_ ridiculous."

Wes shifts his gaze minimally from the group of boys in front of him, in the heat of strategy for a run to the dormitories. "Drop it."

"Why are you guys fighting?"

"We aren't."

"_Right_. Then why are you acting like there's a restraining order separating you two?"

"Some people like _space_," Wes enunciates. David is standing, speaking to the room now. "_I_ like space."

Blaine titters. "Since when? The way you and David are wrapped up in each other—" he laughs a little, teasing, "—I swear, you act like Kurt and I!"

Wes's eyes snap to Blaine so fast that David falters in his speech, but picks up composure and keeps talking even as Blaine goggles openly at his best friend. His mouth is tilted open at an angle and there's dumb surprise dripping from his entire body; like someone who didn't realized they were drowning until they saw all the fish.

"Oh. _Oh_!" Blaine is almost stupid with astonishment, hysterical with glee. Wes's cheeks burn. "I didn't—_oh_, but how could I have seen _that_? It was too perfectly in sight to spot! Oh, _Wes_, how could anyone be cleverer than you!"

Blaine's hysterics are quickly drawing attention, and Wes catches a glimpse of Kurt picking his way through the crowd back to his boyfriend's side. Something instinctive inside him knows that if Kurt arrives before Wes has a chance to threaten Blaine to insensibility, it's all over.

"If you've got a shred of sense, friendship, or self-preservation left, you won't say anything."

"Blaine?"

The soloist is choking back nervous snorts, clearly humiliated by his own reaction. "Yeah, yes of course—"

"Blaine?" Kurt was on them now, infinitely expressive eyes trained on his lover. "Is something funny?"

Blaine smiles disarmingly, his face still flushed with color. "Oh… just Wes. Wes is very funny, Kurt."

Kurt, who is of the popular opinion that Wes has a generously sized stick up his ass, looks spectacularly dubious of this claim. But Kurt is the most well put together person Wes has ever met, and so he delicately settles himself in Blaine's lap, placating the love-struck boy like a pacifier. It's far from over, Wes knows, as hazel eyes train meaningfully on him, but it's better for now.

"Hey."

He breathes a breath, startled more that he hadn't sensed David moving closer than the sudden appearance of the boy at his elbow. "Hi."

David raises a brow at Blaine, who's ogling them without inhibition or shame now that he knows what he's seeing. His tongue is twitching in his open mouth like he wants to say something but can't quite get it out either, and Wes feels second-hand embarrassment for him as David asks him with obvious amusement if something is the matter.

Blaine answers with a strangled sound in the back of his throat that has Kurt staring at him too.

"Are you having an episode?" Kurt asks politely.

Blaine's lips quirk, and a small chuckle escapes. He buries his face into Kurt's shoulder, riding out his laughing fit as his boyfriend's soft scent caresses him, Kurt's graceful fingers falling through his hair, amused. Over Blaine's shoulder, he looks expectantly at Wes, who rolls his eyes at the tenor's antics.

"He'll live," David supplies helpfully.

Kurt's lips purse, and his eyes glint. His arms wrap tighter, protectively around his lover. "Yeah. He will."

* * *

><p>The next night, Wes knows why he can't sleep, and he knows where he'll end up by sunrise.<p>

After sharing his secret with David in the corridor, the trail of blood running down the hallway away from him lurks just at the edge of his thoughts, never too far away.

It's _his secret_, splattered everywhere for anyone to see.

He has to know.

Slipping out of David's octopus-like grip is difficult. Twice Wes manages to nearly wake him. Thankfully Thad has forgone sleeping near the door tonight, and so Wes is out with minimum effort.

He's following the snaking red path; it seems to stretch on endlessly, tracing back to the café at the center of the school before hesitating a few ragged feet, then marching down West Hall. There's a strange noise far ahead; like a sucking sound. Wes gives chase, feeling a freezing cold.

There's a corner in West Hall that turns into another hallway where the sucking noise is loudest, and Wes stops there. Glass is everywhere and icy wind is still shifting the pieces around like an eternal puzzle.

"_The glass on the second floor—West Hall, Totally shattered, all out. With a shot."_

_Oh._

The only trail cleared through the chaos is the thick line of blood painting the floor. It comes to a stop at the last door of the hall, where the two-story picture windows are letting in bits of snow and ice indiscriminately.

Wes reaches out to open it.

A metallic _click_, right in his left ear.

"Don't fucking turn around," a deep voice warns. The cold metal of what can only be the muzzle of a handgun spears Wes's neck with bruising pressure. Sweat and cheap body spray fills the air and Wes chokes on it.

He can't breathe or think; his entire world is focused on the place where his blood runs very close to the surface of his skin.

"You one of those faggy birds?"

He bristled, but the indignation is quickly replaced with terror as a hand reaches around and began unbuttoning his Dalton blazer. Wes struggles instinctively, because if he's going to lose his virginity, it's _not_ going to be like this. His nails claw at the man's face once before a mind-numbing blow to his head stops everything and standing itself becomes a task.

"Don't pull that crap again," the voice warns, now with a furious edge as the gun barrel is pressed to Wes's cheek. The hand goes back to work, and Wes doesn't know what to do; doesn't know what would be worse.

In a second, it doesn't matter though. The stranger has finished off the jacket and yanks the tie up to examine it closer. The little badge of a butter-yellow canary singing a few bars atop an olive branch is at the very corner of Wes's eye and his kidnapper makes a satisfied noise.

"Let's go for a walk." And he's pushed forward.

Wes catches a flash of reflection in the fractured window glass—a bulky figure in a red and white letterman jacket that looks like he could break Wes in half with minimal effort. His eyes are shifty, but there's an edge of determination about him that makes Wes tense.

"Who the hell are you?" Wes demands.

"Shut up and walk."

"What do you want?"

This time the hulking figure doesn't answer. Instead, he prods Wes down West Hall—obviously making a beeline for the Warbler's room. Wes panics.

"Look, just tell me what you want! I can get it for you! Please, just leave us alo—"

"Kurt Hummel."

Wes nearly trips. "_Wha_—?" The football player waves the gun threateningly in his face as they round the corner and begin moving down South Hall where the choir room is located. Wes's mind is locking up in horror, and for the first time in a very long time, he has no idea what to do.

The stranger is knocking before the black-haired boy has time to register that they're at the door.

"Whose there? Wes?" It's Blaine.

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, simply lacking any idea of how to react. "Hi," he finally says weakly.

"Where the hell have you _been_, man!"

"Answer wrong and I'll put a bullet in you, just like I did your friend," the voice warns in his rushing ear.

"What were we talking about when Blaine had his little laughing fit?" David's rich, smooth voice makes Wes's stomach churn pathetically in longing. The Asian boy can feel his heart palpating eagerly at the sound of David, and it's then that he realizes, yeah, he's been lying. He hasn't been honest with himself, he's _devastated_ David—

_David_.

The stranger's grip around Wes's waist tightens.

"I'm… in f-feelings with you," Wes admits, because even if he's too late to give everything of him to David, he knows David at least deserves this. He needs to know that, even if they never kissed, Wes left this world thinking only of _DavidDavidDavid_, and how he never learned to say L-O-V-E even though he's never regretted something so much now.

"_Wes_—"

"Fuck, you prep boys don't really have that whole 'learning curve' thing down."

Kurt's voice is horrified. "_Azimio_?"

"Open the door, homo, before I blow the fairy-in-training's brains out," the football player says darkly, grimacing as he reluctantly keeps a hold on Wes, as though the mere thought of _touching_ a gay is repulsive.

David finally makes a choking sound, finishing processing Wes's words. There's a struggle on the other side of the door, before:

"Don't you fucking open that!"

Wes has to admit that Thad is a wonderful second. He's known it in the abstract, but hearing him like this—miserable and wretched and guilty, but unmoving—gives him something else to regret: not learning to love Thad's loyalty.

David doesn't answer, but suddenly there's the makings of a forceful struggle occurring on the other side of the door.

Loud bangs and shouts and swears rattle the frame and echo down the hall, reverberating as they bounce from wall to wall as an avalanche of voices become a part of the argument. It's impossible to know who is on whose side. Wes wants to shout at them not to open it; _no don't you dare_. But they're weak; so _weak_ and terrified of hearing another gunshot right outside their door and the death of a second friend that would haunt their minds and tear at their souls.

Wes's jaw won't move.

"Open the door," the hulking boy says in false calm.

"They won't do what you say," Wes bluffs. He has no _idea_ what he can make them do.

"No?" And the air shatters in a thousand pieces as the gun is jerked away and the bullet fired smashes into the stone floor with a _crack_ ten feet away. Wes's ears ring with the sound and his shoulders shake with the terror.

The other Warblers are hardly any better off, though.

"Fuck, fuck, _FUCK_!" Nick is chanting hysterically in the background, anxiety lacing everything he says and everything he does. "OH MY GOD, _WES_!"

"WES! _WES_!"

"_WES_!"

Kurt. Blaine.

The banging at the door has gone completely silent.

"YOU'RE THE WORST SORT OF PERSON, AZIMIO! YOU'RE SO SCREWED AFTER THIS!"

"OH, AND WHAT ABOUT _YOU_!" Azimio sneers. "_YOU_ GAVE DAVE _THE GAY_!"

Wes is losing his grip on the conversation. He doesn't care: he wants David, who is unbearably far away on the opposite side of the door. His chocolate eyes are perfect in the mental picture Wes has drawn up for himself.

"—you're _taking about_!"

"I heard him, Hummel! I heard him say all those things in his sleep! What he wants to do to you, how he wants to take—_FUCK_! What the _fuck_, Hummel!"

"And if it wasn't me?" Kurt sneers. "How about someone he's actually close to? Wouldn't it just be a _treat_ if the most closeted asshole in school is crushing on the most homophobi—"

Too. Much.

Pain. Everywhere. Wes can't even tell where it's coming from; all he knows is that death, which is sure to come soon; would be a welcome relief to dodge this agony. Something hot and sticky that's too thick to be sweat runs in rivers down his stomach. In some distant place in his mind where this isn't really happening, he knows that it's blood. He also knows that it's gushing from his shoulder, the loss of blood making him dizzy. Black edges are fading in and then—

Nothing.

Until something is shaking his arm relentlessly, whispering his name over and over.

"D…David?" he mutteres.

"_Wes_," a voice sighs in exhausted relief. "Where do you get off scaring me like that, dude?"

His eyes shoot open and he tries to turn, only to dissolve into dry heaves as the crippling pain in his shoulder spreads nausea everywhere. "J-_Jeff_—"

The blond hushes him urgently. Wes lets him, ignoring the other Warbler as he gags on bile, coughing as quietly as possible. Eventually he surfaces, wiping the corners of his mouth self-consciously. "We heard the… We thought you were _dead_."

"Sorry," the sunshine-blond offers. "I couldn't really do anything about that, though. I can't move my legs."

Wes stares. "Jeff… do you mean you can't move your legs, or… you _can't_ move your legs?"

"Cameron was here a while ago," Jeff continues as though he hasn't heard. "I guess my little trail is about as good as an address. He's using the service stairs to get to North Hall for a cell in the dorms." He smiles wryly. "We all just have to keep alive for a little longer, you know?"

"I think we can do that," Wes whispers, eyes fixed on Jeff's unmoving, bloody legs stretched out at odd angles before him.

"Good."

It's physically beyond Jeff to hold up a conversation, so Wes begins to ramble. He says things he won't remember later—things about Kurt and Blaine, things about Nationals, things about _David_—

"Whoa, _what_ about David?"

Wes stops and notices that Jeff is looking at him with an _oh wow, I never saw that coming_ expression.

"He thinks… that he's in lo—_feelings_ with me."

"Get out of here!" Jeff puffs a few breaths of painful laughter. "You know, it makes sense when you stare at it long enough."

"It makes _less_ sense the longer you stare at it!" Wes protests.

"What's there to get? He thinks you're a catch and now he's going for it."

Jeff watches him flail for an answer for a few seconds before closing his eyes. "We live in such a sleepy world, Wes. Sometimes it's better just to let it rest."

Wes doesn't answer.

* * *

><p><em>You know what, make that a Wevid plushie too.<br>_

_؏Aurora_

P.S: You guys are amazing reviewers and I was so thrilled with some of the things you guys wrote. I'm sure the Wevid Foundation thanks you! ~ love, Aurora

P.S.S: Thank you so much for your amazingly detailed criticism and review, **Arduenna**. You really are sharp, and I'm entirely grateful for the help! ~ extra love, Aurora_  
><em>


	4. Jeff's Coffin

_Beta: Arduenna_

**Rating**: T-TROLOLOLOL!

**Disclaimer**: It's not my Glee, Officer, I swear!

Thank you so much to **Arduenna** who has been such an awesome reviewer that I had to ask her to be my awesome beta. You save me from myself. :P

~ love, Aurora

* * *

><p><em>Chapitre IV<em>:

**Jeff's Coffin**

David has never felt anything like this.

This implosive, empty, _painful_—no, _nothing_ like this.

Out of the corner of his eyes, which are fixed on his splayed hands, he notices Thad standing very near, looking as though he might be contemplating something comforting to say. But it's not any good. Wes was a jealously treasured person to Thad too—and while he has nothing on David's agonizing loneliness and bitter longing, he does look like he's achieved a bad head cold.

"David…"

The chocolate-skinned boy startles so badly that his neck jerks up with a _crack_.

It's Blaine. Of course it's Blaine; he doesn't look any differently at all from the lost little kid with that wild hair Wes had found so amusing from the second story veranda so long ago.

"_David_?"

David realizes then that he's been staring. "What?" he says with a tone that's flatter than anything he's used in his life.

"Wes, he…" Blaine trails off, eyes shining brightly. He too loved Wes; owed his beginning acceptance at Dalton to Wes.

"Wes." David sounds dead to his own ears; indifferent.

"Wes—he _loved_ you."

The hazy cloud of numbing disbelief abruptly falls away.

Searing, blinding, _smoldering_ anguish; in the back of his mind, he thinks he hears a _snap_.

"DON'T LIE TO ME, BLAINE! Don't paste what you and Kurt have over what Wes and I did!" he hisses and the entire room seems to jump back in shock. "Kurt is yours, Blaine! _Forever_, if you like. Wes was never mine—I never had a claim on him and—" David sucks in a ragged breath. "Do you know how much effort, praise, _promises_ it took to make him feel okay? Like just being around me wasn't going to send his pretty little world crashing down?"

"He was in love with you," Blaine chokes out. "He always was. He said so."

David shakes his head, grief welling up inside him. "He was in _feelings_ with me. He's gone now… and we'll never be in love."

David knows it's true; knows that Wes could have been his everything. After all, even the first time David had met Wes he'd known he wanted something from him. He—a peevish child at the time—had soon pouted in defeat at identifying the feeling, and made up for it by pulling sharply on Wes's hair.

_In all this time, I only ever hurt him that once._

* * *

><p><em>David, unfortunately, never had Wes's gift for perfect timing.<em>

_Actually, he rather sucked at executing his entrances, as was demonstrated now._

"_I am uncertain of how you expect to become a competent doctor if you plan to slack off in chemistry, Wesley."_

"_It's a B, dad…"_

"_Should we really go in there?" Kurt wondered, plucking at Blaine's sleeve, unsure, as they hovered just outside the door to Wes and David's shared room._

_Blaine looked about as sure as his boyfriend. "Maybe we can hang out in my room for a bit? Give them some privacy?" he suggested._

_David, who wasn't listening—as he tended not to when Wes was in the immediate vicinity to distract him—blew the plan to hell by breezing past them both and opening his door. "Oh!" he feigned poor surprise as two sets of dark eyes slid towards him when he stepped into the room with an exasperated and uncomfortable Kurt and Blaine trailing after him. "I'm sorry for interrupting."_

"_Of course not. This is your room as well," Wes said automatically. "Dad, you remember David?"_

_They shook hands._

"_And you know Blaine. And Kurt," Wes finished shortly._

_They shook as well, but it was uncomfortable now._

_Blaine coughed. "Um, nice seeing you again sir. Wes, we're going."_

_Wes inclined his head, and the pair disappeared from sight._

_David wandered over, uncomfortable, to his dresser and began rummaging around for another tie. Jeff, whom he now had certain plans to drown without remorse, had spilled some coffee on his current one._

_He stopped when Mr. Wes's Father spoke:_

"_He is dating that _boy_?"_

_David never wanted to assume anything about Wes's family. They had given him _Wes_, after all, so David tried not to judge. But while the tone Wes's father used was not necessarily repulsed, it was less than approving._

"_Yes, he is."_

_David knew he had to flat out get lost. However judgment fell on David for thinking so, Wes never was more enticing than when he decided to make someone else very miserable indeed. His voice reached a pitch-perfect smoothness and his rare smile turned overly pleasant with his head at an inviting tilt._

_David had to leave _now_. _

_He slammed his drawer shut without preamble and was already halfway out the room when he addressed himself to a startled Mr. Wes's Father: "It was nice seeing you again, sir," he invented quickly, fleeing the scene at a near run before anyone could answer._

_Maybe he'd bother Blaine and Kurt. Hopefully he'd interrupt them mid-make out session because if he was going to be sexually frustrated, he had to insist on spreading the feeling around._

_He did, indeed, interrupt, and it worked out for a while. An hour or something at least, until Blaine-the-saint-unless-you're-cutting-into-Klaine-time unceremoniously kicked David out from his single with an expression that implied that David's mission had not been in vain._

_David couldn't help but think the entire thing had less to do with him and more to do with Blaine's (mis?)fortune of having a boyfriend who wore his uniform a little too well and a little too tight._

_The commentary did little to endear himself to Blaine, who looked vexed before slamming the door in the African-American teen's laughing face._

_Unfortunately, Wes's father wasn't gone when he got back to the dorm._

_He was, however, looking very unhappy in the middle of the room with his son's cell phone in hand; Wes was currently ignoring him in a corner, book propped up in front of him._

"_Sir?" he asked politely but bemusedly when the man gave an irritated grunt at the "damn piece of technology" which so daringly eluded his understanding._

"_Oh, hello David. I locked my keys in the car," Wes's father sighed in explanation, bewildered as he searched through his son's cell phone contact list. "How impossible. I remember…" He cut off, lips tightening in embarrassment at something on David's other side. The African-American boy glanced over and paused._

_Wes was leveling his father a polished-polite (but still openly judging) look much crueler than the caliber he liked to shoot James during Warbler meetings when Thad wasn't looking. David always thought them pretty funny, but being viewed that way by your own child gave David second-hand humiliation, and he looked away uncomfortably._

_It's when he averted his gaze with strong acquired-condescension for the man that he catches on to something that David didn't understand at first. _

_It was a key. There was nothing interesting about it except that David had never seen it there before and he needed something to stare at awkwardly as Wes's father tried to explain the situation, baffled, to a woman on the other end—Wes's mother, he guessed._

"—_no, the spare isn't there, dear. I must have forgotten it," he heard Wes's father admit, chagrinned. A loud, angry chatter of language came out of the cell phone and a dark red flush began to rise on the man's neck from the corner of David's eye. Odd phrases like "old man" and "doctor" plus "once and for all!" jumped out at particularly loud points._

_Wes caught his eye just then and tilted his his head, moving past him to glance at the key as well. Suddenly, David knew what it was for and where it went and hastily found something else to awkwardly stare at._

_When the conversation ended, it didn't end well._

"_I don't understand this contraption!" Wes's father snapped, pressing the phone into Wes's palm while gathering his coat—there was a creeping coffee stain on it now, David noticed—and moved towards the door. "Triple A will be here soon to unlock the car—" he sounded deeply unhappy, "—and hopefully my cell phone will be in there, though I thought it'd be in my pocket..."_

_Wes's father escaped through the door in a flustered huff, too preoccupied to acknowledge either of them. He closed the door behind him and the room dissolved into silence. Then:_

"_I don't think _anyone_ can handle you," David grinned, leaning against his bed._

_A flickering smile on Wes's part. "Maybe that's the point."_

"_Think he'll be back anytime soon?"_

"_On a good day, I can make him doubt his sanity," Wes offered, standing up to deposit a cell phone—his _father's_ cell phone—in a desk drawer to be dealt with later. "The entire family thinks he's got Alzheimer's. My mom will send him to a specialist after this, I bet."_

_David flinched, sensing one of those times where Wes's defenses had bred viciousness. "That's not… extreme?"_

"_That's what family is, David," Wes said disinterestedly, powering down the cell phone before closing the drawer. "Torturing each other at arm's length."_

How could anyone be this brilliant_, David sighed: …_or this cruel?

* * *

><p>"I have to go to the bathroom," David announces loudly.<p>

If the circumstances had been different, a following chorus of "overshare of information, man" would echo through the Warbler's room in variations. Now, though, there's barely any reaction except a crowd of pitying faces turned his way.

Thad opens the window for him and holds it as David perches carefully on the icy windowsill before pushing off and landing two feet down in a glacial cloud of ice that immediately begins sticking to his cloths and freezes his feet.

The fresh snowfall for drinking, they had decided, is to the left while the frost-covered bushes to the right serve as a sort of make-shift outhouse. David wanders the latter way now, aware of eyes on his back before disappearing into the trees for some "privacy."

Instead of stopping, he carves carefully around a larger shrub before creeping carefully—shivering violently—towards the very edge of the ornate West Hall opposite him.

"_The glass… West Hall… shattered, all out. With a shot."_

_That_ would be his reentrance site.

_Thad may hate me for what I've done_, David reasons, numb beyond reason and teeth clashing together so hard and fast that his own shivers give him a headache, _but it's my choice and only my risk._

West Hall is, as promised, probably never going to make a full recovery from the havoc wroth by the elements. David cautiously knocks out the sharp edges of broken glass of what used to be a two-story stained glass mural of a setting sun and climbs though the cleared hole.

His feet land with a _crunch_ on the glass.

David is completely wrong-footed upon realizing that, rather than starting at the beginning, he's inadvertently found the end. He's overcome with incredulity, but there's no arguing with it: that's Wes's secret painted on the floor. It runs along the walls in crimson-red happiness, some of it iced over from the freezing temperatures, but waits at a certain door for David.

Taking every scrap of strength that Wes might have left for him at one time or another, David gently eases the door open…

…and is almost beside himself with pain and disbelief as he's socked in the _other_ eye.

"Fuck!" he can't help but exclaim, clutching his new wound while blindly kicking out in front of him.

A sharp, nearly unearthly cry erupts from somewhere vaguely below him as his foot makes contact with something that's soft and solid underfoot. He doesn't notice or look because here in front of him—_god, I'll never ask for anything from the universe ever again_—it's _Wes_.

There's no words or way to say how David feels, seeing those poison-black eyes locked, frozen, on him from where Wes has retreated a few paces away. He can't even name Wes's expression, but it looks shaken enough that David thinks Wes might really punch him again.

"Wes, you're more dangerous than anything else here," he jokes weakly to break the tableau.

The picture shatters at Wes nearly tumbles into David in desperate relief. David doesn't realize the intention until it's happening: Wes's lips are—_Wes's lips_! He has to stop there, dizzy from adrenaline and terrified joy.

He's imagined it before, but never had a visual for comparison—the Asian boy isn't so classless as to bring his girlfriend around David—what it's like to kiss Wes.

Wes kisses him like a puppy: desperate to show affection but not quite sure how to go about it, either. It's a little too wet and there's too much teeth—Wes bites David's lip twice as their noses bump uncoordinatedly. But David nearly cries because Wes has never been this open, this _helpless_ in front of him.

Wes kisses like he's never kissed anyone before; or at least, like he's never thought of the person he kissed.

It makes David feel a bit helpless too.

It's when he's coiling an arm around Wes to pull him close that he feels the sticky, warm liquid that's actually coating the back of Wes's blazer by now, turning it sodden. The dark material has made it nearly invisible in the dim lighting provided only by the window, but David brings his fingers close to inspect them.

He all but shoves Wes away and around with an incoherent exclamation of shock before turning him once again. His fingers are stained crimson with Wes's secret and his eyes jerk up abruptly to Wes's face, which is starkly pale now that's he's really focusing on it. The shorter boy's teeth are vibrating continuously against one another and he looks frankly disoriented—as though his mind is half here but also half somewhere else. The only thing he really seems to be noticing is David, who he's using as an anchor to pull himself together again. Lucidity is leaking back into his eyes.

"Oh, I've done that twice now," he breathes, apology in his voice as his hand brushes lightly over the now-swelling wound blooming around David's left eye.

"It's because I snore, isn't it?"

Wes's mouth twitches, albeit hysterically.

David suddenly takes a sharp intake of breath, dropping his gaze to the floor. He'd kicked something soft… something— "Oh my god, Jeff!" He drops to his knees, grabbing the unconscious blonde's shoulders and giving them a little shake of relief and panic. "He's warm—he's alive… Why isn't he waking up!"

"I must prescribe _not_ kicking him again—" Wes bitches, "—but he's been zoning in and out for… however long I've been here." Wes pauses tonelessly. "He really isn't well, David."

"What can we do?" David begs, looking up at his best friend with that familiar look that all but announces the belief that Wes has all the answers; it's a mirror to practically every look Thad has ever leveled in so much as Wes's general direction.

He doesn't much like the one Wes comes up with this time, though: "What you can do is return to the choir room and, when help comes, lead them to us."

David objects passionately. "You can't think I'll go along with that now, can you? Not with you both hurt like this… And not when I'm feeling you more clearly than I've ever felt you in my entire life."

Wes hesitates, feeling the effects of this boy speaking sweetly to him. "You're making all these trades and you don't even know."

David isn't giving him a choice. "I'm sorry to disregard you, Wes, but we've reached an impasse here."

"Really?" the boy hesitates.

David's eyes soften. "Come here… please."

Wes hesitates visibly before taking small, deliberate steps forward. When he's within arm's length, he stops—but David doesn't reach to pull him. The boy eyes him; takes the last step. David brushes Wes's shoulder very slightly, but it's still a thousand needles stabbing into him and Wes gasps, feeling dizziness threatening to bring him to his knees. David quickly withdraws. "God, Wes… Wes, you can't be here. At least Kurt needs to look at that."

"What about—" Both their eyes stray to Jeff, who's unconscious and sheet-white where he isn't secret-red. His legs are contorted at horrifying angles and David feels bile rise up in his throat at the picture; the stench of congealing blood nearly sends him heaving. He quickly averts his eyes.

…_it's my choice… only my risk_, he had said. Well how about now, when his risk is gambling with someone else's grip on life?

"_You're strong… for this, you're also strong enough…" _Even if now _David_ is sorry for asking _Wes_ to be.

"We can't move him. That would just be worse."

David is met with immediate opposition.

"We can't just leave him here!" Wes protests hotly in what David knows, but will never point out, is a near-perfect echo of Kurt's earlier outrage on behalf of the same person towards Wes himself.

David meets the challenge just as fast. "I'll leave a thousand people in this room before losing you a second time!" he retorts angrily, straightening in front of his Wes. "Do you know how agonized Thad was when he kept that door shut? I nearly _killed_ him—we struggled for the same thing in opposite directions _so hard_… Sometimes it takes more strength to let go of someone else's life than your own. And now you're on this side of it…"

David expects yelling. He expects stalling, or maybe even a desperately-constructed plan of how to move Jeff out with them.

What he doesn't expect is _that_ expression to cross Wes's face. The one Blaine wore the second time he'd realized he loved Kurt—terrified and helpless, and really, _really_ in feelings. The one he himself wore right before Wes warned him—_ordered_ him—not to say it.

"_Don't say it—that word… or we can't be friends anymore."_

David feels a little more strongly for him, empathy tugging on his sore heartstrings.

_I know._

He really does.

* * *

><p>Jeff still hasn't woken up by the time David closes the door behind them. Wes has turned very quiet as he guards the corridors with crossed arms while David unscrews the long tube of wood glue salvaged from the janitor's closet next door.<p>

This feels all wrong. For a start, it's the Council's job to make sure things like this don't happen. In a crisis, they make everyone stick together; get everyone somewhere safe.

Well they can't promise togetherness, David thinks as he begins sealing the door shut to its frame with a grim frown, but they'll do _this_ for Jeff; they'll keep this Azimio guy away from him until help arrives.

And if it arrives too late… well, then they'll have at least given him some peace.

"That's it," David announces quietly as he reaches full-circle at the door's hinge. The glue is hardening fast in the cold. He gives the handle an experimental tug after a few seconds pass. The door doesn't budge an inch.

Wes's arms slowly drop from around his chest. "I guess so."

"We're doing our _best_," David reminds him quietly at Wes's odd tone.

"Yeah," the flint-eyed boy agrees, backing down the hallway, "it just doesn't feel like I thought it would… Like we're right," he adds at his… friend's prompting tilt of the head.

David makes no move to reply, but does offer his arm to Wes, who is shaking more pronounced than ever as they edge down West Hall towards the café cross-roads. He can feel Wes hesitate before wrapping his own arms around it, curling greedily into the touch and support.

David's ears are bristling with sensitivity as they make the turn into South Hall, following the ice-edged bloody trail. Every breath that isn't his and every footstep _including_ his causes him to grit his teeth nervously. But their almost there; so _near_. He feels Wes's grip tighten almost demonstratively on him. His words are less-so.

"Don't," Wes breathes, "tell Nick about Jeff."

"Tell him… that Jeff is ali—?"

"—tell him _anything_," he corrects vehemently. "Not even that we've seen him."

David hesitates. "Isn't that… cruel?"

"He'll leave to find him," Wes says matter-of-factly. "I promise he will if he knows."

"How do you know?"

"You did."

David considers him carefully for a moment before nodding sharply.

In front of the Warblers' door, they knock loosely. It makes Wes nervous to be out there, David can tell, and with good reason. His hand slips over Wes in a display of comfort, but a _click_ interrupts any musings on what else could be done.

The lock slides open slowly, and the door swings inward without a single question.

David thinks that's odd but not unreasonable. Thad's grip on leadership has been a bit precarious since Wes's disappearance; collective _worlds_ had fallen apart with Wes's disappearance.

They slip in past the threshold…

…and walk into something from a horror film.

* * *

><p><em>David trolls Klaine. Yeah he does.<em>

_؏Aurora_


	5. Tinderbox

_Beta: Arduenna_

**Rating**: T-Trolldemort. 'Nough said.

**Disclaimer**: I've never seen that Glee before in my life, I swear! I don't even know what that is. I'm... holding it for a friend!

Is there an awesome award on FFN that goes to amazing betas? If so, **Arduenna** is about to be nominated.

~ love, Aurora

* * *

><p><em>Chapitre V:<em>

**Tinderbox**

There's nothing David can compare it to; no movie scene or word that could sum up what's going on here. Instead he lets go a surprised swear that doesn't even make Wes glance at him once.

"Perfect."

Azimio's face makes David think of tarantulas and wolf spiders. It's not an inaccurate description, he notices as his gaze wanders dumbly over the room.

His eyes lock with Thad's.

All the Warblers have been corralled to the opposite corner of the room. They're not moving at all, and while David understands why, still something feels off about the situation. He looks back to the football player to try and piece it together only to realize that the gun in his hand is pointing down at the floor where Kurt Hummel kneels at his feet.

David involuntarily jumps back.

"How the hell did you get in here?" Wes says disdainfully next to him.

"Oh, you're alive," Azimio notices distantly without any real inflection. He's already lost interest, staring intently outside.

There's nothing there.

David meets Thad's eye again. The green irises measure him before trailing leadingly to the window David himself had snuck out from. Beyond it, David sees his own footprints marring the soft surface in a trail impossible to miss. A set of heavier, wider tracks dodge between them.

"_You're making all these trades and you don't even know."_

And oh. _Oh_.

A burning in the back of his throat.

David slumps under the weight of dizzying realization. It's him. _He's_ brought this on them all.

It's the second time in his life that David could never recall feeling more awful.

* * *

><p>"<em>You're short," David told the boy, scrunching up his nose in an attempt at a funny face. "Why are you so short?"<em>

_The boy, a stoic little thing for an elementary schooler, narrowed his eyes and pulled his lips into a pout. _

_From the start of the day, David had felt as wrong-footed as a child could be at his new school. Over the weekend, his family had busily unpacked after his mother had decided a new part of the country was just what her October needed. _

_And David, who had never wanted for playmates in his life, was reduced to uncertainties and surliness as he was tossed, perplexed, into the position of needing to forge fresh friendships. _

_Once placed on the playground, this stance did not improve. All the other children seemed content with their current niches—little groups playing sports or dolls—while David hung back nervously along the fence. He scanned the different groups hopefully before pausing on a boy lingering alone by the sandbox a ways away._

That_, he decided confidently, _is going to be my new friend.

And so the courting began.

"_I'm not _short_," the boy finally answered, attempting to look supremely indifferent. Instead he looked about a second away from tears._

_David frowned, weighing the long eyelashes and short, pretty hair in his mind. It made a funny feeling bubble up in his stomach. "What's your name?" he demanded to know instead._

_The boy shoved his nose in the air. "I'm _Wes_. You're _stupid_. Go _away_."_

"_Hey!" The chocolate-skinned boy protested. "I just want to play with you!"_

_Wes's small lips curved into a prototype of a sneer that would one day send shivers of pleasure down David's back. "I don't _like_ you."_

_That made David's heart give a little jerk of dismay. _

The first time Wes had ever hurt him.

"_Why not?"_

_"None of your business__!" Wes retorted._

"_You're just a stupid, mean little doll!" David shouted back, reaching out and giving Wes's pretty, pretty hair a sharp yank in childish frustration._

_Wes yelped in pain and shock, charcoal-black eyes widening. A fraction of a second later, they narrowed in a promise of vengeance. Turning on his heel, the future Warbler flounced off—only to be tugged back, this time by his sleeve._

_He rounded on David, nearly pressing their noses together. "What's the big idea!"_

_David stumbled back, a dark flush rising to youthful cheeks. He spread his hands in apology. "I just thought… maybe you don't know how to make friends either?"_

_Wes stopped, his small hands clenched together so tightly that the bony parts where the knuckles were turned white; then a soft sigh. David thought it was a sigh, at least. Until, that is, Wes scrubbed furiously at his eyes with the back of his hands and bolted blindly away towards the teaching complex._

_David was left standing alone by the tree with his first taste of feeling disliked and another heavier feeling of guilt that would become increasingly familiar over the course of years knowing Wes._

* * *

><p>Azimio is senseless, but just dangerous enough because he has no plan. He pulls at his collar, as though suddenly too hot despite the biting wind edging in through the still-open window which he's too far past thought to close. He stands up, completely forgetting Kurt had been made to kneel at his feet and so nearly trips over him.<p>

"Look." Wes pulls it together with a glass-brittle grip and presses. "Nothing's… nothing's happened yet. We're all still alive—" _that_ gets Nick's attention, "—and you haven't done anything you can't take ba—"

"You don't know _shit_ about what I've done," the football player seethes, anxiously fingering the gun safety on and off with his eyes fixed on Kurt.

Wes's secret is thick and red all over Azimio's letterman jacket and jeans.

Kurt hesitates. "Did you... hurt anyone else?"

Someone else's secret—trapped together with his.

"What else was I going to do, huh?" Azimio rambles madly, running his spare hand harshly through his bristly hair. "I did Dave a _favor_. But the police—they're not going to see it that way. _I_ did what they couldn't do! _Me_!"

Wes, who up to this point has led a sheltered life, has never seen anything so deranged. Azimio is pacing back and forth, mumbling, restless and wild-eyed. He doesn't seem to notice anyone anymore except when they move, but conversely none of the Warblers dare stray their eyes.

Eventually, he comes to a conclusion. His face turns solemn and more insensible with repulsion than before.

"So which of you fags have boyfriends?" He's already grabbing Kurt roughly by the arm and forcing him to a standing position. Immediate protests rang around the room, but everyone's too nervous to move. It's too risky for Kurt, whose eyes are closed in silent, shaking denial at the cold metal pressed against his back, and for the other Warblers themselves, who are too miserably terrified to act as heroically as all the movies say they should.

"Fine," he decides when no one is stupid enough to step forward, "we'll just gather the rest of the _girls_ in the room, then."

No one can figure out what he means by that until Azimio yanks roughly on Kurt's slender waist, and from that point they can only assume. Azimio's steps stop for a few seconds before James and his decidedly long hair—a style he enjoys because his _girlfriend_ enjoys it so much, ironically—before he's distracted by Wes, at whom his lip curls.

"You know, you really don't _look_ like a homo," Azimio observes in a parody of niceties.

David tightens his grip on Wes's wrist and moves slightly in front of him.

"Not thinking of letting me have him, huh?" Azimio asks with humor.

David moves completely in front of Wes now.

"You ready to make that trade?" he wonders, clicking the gun safety audibly a few times. Kurt flinches with each one, and on the other side of the room, so does Blaine.

Thad raises half-way from his seat before hastily retaking it at Azimio's harsh orders.

David's eyes lock abruptly with Wes's in the window's reflection.

"…_yours… Forever, if you like…"_

Azimio notices.

He seizes Wes's short hair around David, ripping strands from their roots while forcing Wes along towards him and shoving him into Kurt. Kurt catches him, nails scrabbling against his skin for grip; some of them are broken and short, some filled with blood and others with skin and dirt.

But then David does something Azimio doesn't expect.

He _fights_.

David's fist collides so hard with the football player's face that it seems impossible that at least a few teeth wouldn't fall out. An eraser-sized chip cracks off one of Azimio's front top teeth, and he roars in pain as his own blood is added to the collection coloring his letterman jacket. David's dark skin has split and hot blood is running freely from his hand.

He's got the jump on him now, though. David's next hit finds the underside of Azimio's throat—something he picked up in an action movie that never bothered mentioning how much it fucking _hurt_ to be hitting muscle with a ragged hand.

Azimio nearly takes advantage of David's pained wince, but out of seemingly nowhere, another fist hurls itself into the fray and Azimio's gut.

It's Nick, who noticed the opportunity for revenge the second it had presented itself to him with such a flourish. He takes it with a vengeance, all nails and teeth and limbs as he attempts to tear Azimio apart. More blood spills and now it's impossible to tell who from because in the short space of two seconds, Thad and Trent are both there, as furious and frenzied as anyone else in the mob as they jostle each other hungrily for a piece of Azimio's bloodied flesh.

It's terrifyingly exhilarating how good it feels with that energy and those thoughts running through him. For one wild moment, David thinks they really _could_ kill Azimio. The only thing halting progress has been the gun—

—speaking of which.

A loud, scrapping clatter screeches along the icy ground as a particularly well-aimed punch on James's part send the gun halfway across the room. Everyone's eyes follow its progress.

Before they act.

They try: they really do. They try to both restrain Azimio from retrieving it while making an effort to claim the weapon for themselves, but it's no use. Whether or not luck has shed a few tears for them, the fact remains that Azimio is a football player; trained to tackle, trained to _retaliate_. And despite numbers, they're just a group of well-bred private school boys with good intentions who have never raised a hand against each other in their lives.

Azimio lunges; but so does David.

And in a very _Chicago_ move, they both reach for the gun…

…but it doesn't work out nearly so nice now as it does in the musical.

Azimio collects the handgun with a triumphant shout and an ungraceful fall, which jars his now-oddly-angled left shoulder visibly. "Try that again, _you f_—"

Sure he has the gun, but Wes—who isn't all too remarkable as far as scent-sensitivity goes—can smell the fresh blood in the air. Whatever Azimio says and does, the blow they've dealt this lunatic is no glancing shot.

Seemingly unable to stop himself, Trent makes a crude hand gesture.

Azimio fires.

Two events happen in very quick succession.

In the room: a swarm of voices, crashing over themselves and each other as shouts go off. Azimio's aim is either very poor by now or else the shot was merely meant to agitate, because it goes several yards to Trent's right and through a window, whose glass instantly spiders but doesn't shatter.

And outside it: an absolute invasion.

The latter kills the former very quickly as everyone freezes, both sides struck stupid with surprise as somewhere vaguely in the direction of East Hall, a stampede of fierce footsteps echoes clearly though the silent school.

"It's over," someone breathes, sounding disbelieving even as they say it. "My _god_—"

"_Cameron was here a while ago… the service stairs to get to North Hall for a cell in the dorms."_

And Wes knows; knows also that the most dangerous part of their nightmare is unfolding in Azimio's expression.

There's a moment wherein he thinks—a bit too optimistically—that Azimio might have stopped breathing altogether. But he ends up taking in a very ragged shudder of air, the gun shaking in his sweating grip.

"_In a crisis, you see the… raw parts that they haven't worked through yet…"_

Now… _now_, Wes knows, is when they should _fear_.

"_Come_—don't follow." Azimio directs the former to the pair and the latter to the rest of the Warblers.

James spits out a curse at him.

"It's over," the same voice as before—Thad, his voice cracked—repeats. "They're going to throw you in _prison_ to rot!"

It's perhaps not the best course of action. When faced with the interposition of reality between himself and whatever his actual cause for coming there was, Azimio reacts violently. He slams his elbow into Kurt, who yelps in pain and surprise as he's forced back towards the doorway, a surprised Wes being dragged with them.

Azimio's aim is unfortunately very sure this time as he points the gun at David past the threshold; they just outside of the door while the rest of the Warblers crowd hungrily beyond it. He addresses Wes: "_Close the door_ or I'll put a bullet in him, I _fucking swear_."

And even if Wes is sorry that Kurt has to be a part of this, he's more certain that living without David would be _agonizing_. So even if he has regrets for Blaine, for _Kurt_—Wes will do anything for David.

He gives the room a long last look before closing the doors shut.

Suddenly, the football player smacks the back of Wes's head with force enough to fear. "GO!" he snaps, chasing them wildly down the corridor.

Wes is choking, breathless as he feels the tentative blood clot at his shoulder tear itself apart once more. He hears the voices—the police, it has to be. They're coming from East hall, running, _running_; and they from South hall, due north… They would meet! They would be saved!

The café is just ahead, and the rescue squad has never sounded closer. But just when Wes is starting to hope, Azimio suddenly slams Kurt across the back of his neck, jolting a flight response. The smaller boy gasps and shoots faster away from their captor, and Wes follows on tribe instinct.

Faster and ducking around the curved walls circling the café, the chaos leads them to the foot of the North Hall staircase and up.

North Hall gives the impression of something that had once been very beautiful, but has since been brought to its knees. Dirt, snow, ice, slush: all of this smears the ground and tries to trip the three as Azimio recklessly pushes the two captives forward.

But he's injured; Azimio's ankle is twisted at a weird angle and he's clearly struggling as much as he's pushing.

Spotting this, Wes takes Kurt's hand and yanks him in _another_ direction, hurtling down hallways in evasion. Right, left, left, straight, another ri—

Dead end; but a dead end like no other.

The only reason the second floor of West Hall is better off than the first is because all the shattered glass of the two-story window fell _down_ and not _in_. But while the pathway in is less horrible than it could have been, the sharp drop-off edged with slivers and shards jutting out from the window's sides isn't any better off because of it.

"Feeling lucky?"

Wes's lip curls condescendingly at Kurt's words. He turns on his heel, seeking a better way out for them.

It's too late.

Azimio drags himself nearer them down the hall like a scene from the most believable zombie horror film Wes has ever deigned to see on David's beggary. Kurt in particular seems reluctant to be within touching distance of the man and risks the very edge of the window.

Clicking the safety off again, the calloused and chapped hands are uneasy.

"Jump," Azimio tells him.

Kurt takes a bewildered step back but checks himself swiftly by catching the glass-laced window frame when his foot starts to slip. "W-_What_?"

The two-story drop looks a long ways from here. The doubled-up footprints of David and Azimio—though Wes had no way of knowing whose they were—etch deeply in the snow a thousand feet below. Ruined, pointed glass shards glitter in a heavy cloak over the snowfall. Whether or not the fall would kill them was irrelevant; it would be like jumping into a pile of needles either way.

"You're better off dead, you know. It's better for everyone this way, isn't it?"

"Whatever you do, there's no way in hell they'll let you live after it," Kurt sneers, and Wes wishes desperately that Kurt would stop telling so many truths for a minute so that Wes could think up a good lie to appease Azimio.

"You are so _used_ to special attention!" Azimio all but foamed at the mouth. "Sylverster, and the Mexican words teacher—" Wes had no time to marvel at the fact that anyone could misidentify the Spanish language because he could feel the vibrations under his feet. They were searching for them—perhaps had found the blood trail, perhaps had found the other Warblers, perhaps—

"DROP YOUR WEAPON!"

Azimio almost does just that out of sheer surprise.

"PUT IT DOWN!"

A stream of thickly-garbed figures with highly convincing guns all locked on the football player appear in groups and clumps from the left and right of the hallway. Even after them, more shield and people with serious expressions file in. In a space of about three seconds, there's a solid wall of police and agents.

Azimio answers with only a disgusted look at first. The second response is less passive in its aggression.

With a mighty shove and a cry of triumph, the football player shoves Kurt from his place before the shattered glass. Wes watches in horror as the brunet seems too shocked to understand what is happening at first, but when he realizes, he screams.

It takes a minute for Wes to realize it's actually _his_ screams.

By the time he does, he notices vaguely that Azimio has moved—has tried to jump out the window too. There's a rally of frantic shots—Azimio roars in pain as one clips his hip, sending a fresh spurt of blood all over Wes's already filthy Dalton slacks.

Once he drops to the floor on his knees, clutching himself, one of the officers nearest him darts forward, grabs the back of his shirt and hurls him down none too gently to the floor, speaking into her radio even as figures are swarming the distant ground where Kurt had landed.

Kurt, who isn't moving.

The officer is speaking to Azimio:

"—ou're under arrest for the murder of Dave Karofsky."

And Wes is gone.

* * *

><p><em>These are not the trolls you're looking for...<em>

_؏Aurora_


	6. Breathing

_Beta: Arduenna_

**Rating**: T—with reasoning this time.

**Warning**: Those seeking life advice or moral instruction from this fic should look elsewhere. I think… I dunno, do what you want.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Glee. This message will self-destruct in five seconds…

**Wevid Decree Number 4534**: OH HAI THUR! I can't believe I haven't updated this since I moved to Paris, which was, yeah, _months_ ago. But between you, me and Klaine, THERE BE MORE WEVID IN THESE PARTS!

Cults and candy-based sacrifices to **Arduenna**! Thanks for helping me pull this off when you already have so much going on. (_Huggles_)

~ love, Aurora

* * *

><p><em>Chapitre VI:<em>

**Breathing**

"Get his head!"

"Insert the IV—"

"We're _losing_ him!"

_Flatline_.

"No—NO! GIVE ME THE PADDLES!"

"STAND CLEAR!"

_ZZZZZZ!_

_Flatline_.

* * *

><p>When Wes wakes, he doesn't wake well. His thoughts are slow and thick, and it hardly seems worth it to open his eyes with that bright white glare nearly blinding him. It takes a few minutes to pluck up the motivation, but when he does, he finds himself in what is undoubtedly a hospital; a little machine beeps rhythmic and peaceful in the background.<p>

Wes gives an abrupt sob without knowing at first why. His body attempts to curl in on itself like a wounded spider, but long lines of clear tubes and needles in his skin and veins send admonishing shots of pain to different parts of his body—his shoulder for sure, which gives a white-hot throb at the movement.

There's suddenly not enough air or tears in the world; Wes's breath comes in sharp, cutting gasps and sobs shake his frame. Hysteria is welling up; tears blur his vision, and in the background, that beep is now neither rhythmic nor peaceful.

"—need you to try and calm down, okay? You're safe—you're in our intensive care unit. Take a few even breaths. There you go… a few more—alright. Take a sip of water. You're okay, Wesley. You're okay."

Wes doesn't notice the floor nurse until a straw is being pressed to his lips what is clearly a few seconds into her speech. She wears an unremarkable white uniform, but Wes thinks he's seeing things at first because all the hair on one side of her head is a pure bone-white while the other is crude oil black, all of it done up in doll-like curls within pigtails.

"—y name's Frances. How are you feeling?"

Wes, in any other mindset, would feel this to be an unfair question considering the episode she's probably just witnessed. But his nerves are simply too frayed to think much along those lines.

"They fixed up your shoulder during surgery," Frances continues, flitting lightly around the room to check various instruments. Wes finds himself dazedly watching the Cruella-like curls bounce, his mind still muddled with sleep. "You're very lucky—you should make a full recovery given enough rest. It could have been a lot worse."

His mind gives an almost physical start at the implication and it only now occurs to him that _oh my god, oh my god, __oh my _god_—!_

"I—" Wes coughs, his throat sore and scratchy. The nurse offers the water once more, and he drinks once gulp impatiently before shoving it away. "Is David okay? Is Kurt—_oh my god, that guy_ pushed_ hi_—"

"Wesley, please!" In the background he notices that the frantic beeping has begun again. In the corner of Wes's wildly rolling eye, he sees two more nurses coming to Cruella's aide through the open door.

_Kurt, falling with flailing limbs and a high scream two floors down on a blanket of thick snow and jagged glass._

_The guy in the letterman jacket, trying to throw himself to his own death before being shot down._

_David; _David_, whose fate was unclear but suddenly thrice more important than Wes knowing his own._

Before Wes knows what's he's staring at, the clear substance he's watching Cruella inject into the IV bag hanging next to his bed is taking effect. He feels his hackles unwillingly lowering, and it's a sharp disconnect between body and mind wherein his head is _screaming_ but his body is losing interest fast.

"—sley?"

He snaps to attention again, and finds that one of the aids has vanished, but the other is hovering uselessly over Cruella's shoulder at the foot of his bed. Wes stares wild-eyed at him; the assistant grimaces and leaves too.

"Where's… where's my phone?" Wes mutters, mind scattered in about three different directions. He doesn't see it on the side table and it only occurs to him a handful of seconds later that he never had it to begin with—hence the start of their weekend spent in the dark.

"It wasn't among your personal effects," Cruella responds automatically.

It won't do any good anyway. It's not like David will have his either. Wes always calls David when he needs that jagged guilt to distract him from anything else.

His logic is falling apart and the world is going in circles.

He. Can't. _Handle_. This.

"GET OUT! GET OUT!" Wes demands furiously, snapping up the glass of water from the nightstand with his good arm and flinging it hysterically at the wall behind the nurses' heads. He wants his _space_ back and all these people are _in it_—

"Hold him!" Cruella orders, and in the corner of his vision Wes can see a new needle being prepared.

He's terrified, _strangled_—never felt like this before. He can't breathe—certainly can't _think_—and all the while strong hands press his head at an angle, exposing the slender curve of his neck.

"STOP IT!" Wes feels his nails slice into something warm and wet, answered by a cry of pain as one of the nursing aids jump back from his position holding down his left arm. In a move Wes does not foresee, the man stumbles into whoever happens to be holding his head at the time, and they both tumble into the wall.

Wes's neck snaps around just as Cruella manages to position the shot at his jugular, inadvertently jamming the needle in with their combined force.

The pain is blistering and Wes can't be sure if it's that or whatever has been crammed into his vein that does it, but within seconds the room vanishes in a blink.

* * *

><p><em>Wes's head lolled around his shoulders, eyelashes fluttering lazily as streams of steam coiled and undulated in the humid air filling the room. A thick layer of fog coated the large mirror by the door, sometimes becoming so dense that a bead formed and a small drop meandered towards the ground.<em>

_The door swung gently open and shut, but Wes didn't lift his head. Only when a hand brushed away the soaked locks framing his forehead did he open his eyes._

"_Hi," David murmured, kneeling outside the bathtub with one arm propping his head up on the porcelain rim and the other dipping into the warm water to sprinkle it on Wes's wet skin._

_Wes tilted his head slightly, trembling at David's touch._

"_You tired?"_

_Wes sighed contentedly, staring into David's eyes and pressing back into each soft touch. He looked… happy; genuinely so. The closest David could compare it to was Wes flushed with pleasure after a victory—but even that didn't seem right when it was dripping with smugness at having outmaneuvered someone else. _

"_Why is it I can touch you like this only when you're not very focused anyway?" David traced a watery heart on top of Wes's beating one, brushing the already painfully sensitive nipple there._

_Wes choked on a gasp at the touch, halfway bringing himself to a sitting position before sinking, boneless, back down, resigning his will to David's own._

"_You're so mine like this," David teased knowingly, leaning forward to brush his lips against Wes's cheek. The hard surface of the tub dug painfully into his ribs. "Just like this, Wes."_

_Wes shivered in the warm water, the rapid thump of his heart causing faint ripples to lap the water's edges._

"_Just like this, Wes?" David's tone turned pleading. The grip steadying him on the tube's edge tightened. "Please, Wes? Just like this?"_

"…_Just like this," a feathery voice whispered back, nearly causing David to fall into the tube with him in shock. "But… _only_ like this."_

_David bit his lip viciously but didn't answer. He leaned forward; the porcelain bruised his chest but it didn't matter. He breathed hot breath on Wes's face, was so close he saw goose bumps flare up all over that smooth flesh. Wes's lips parted slightly; expectantly._

_David couldn't, though. This couldn't be their first kiss, with Wes's eyes slammed shut and, okay, maybe the lack of cloths wasn't all that tragic, but it didn't make anything more right. _Certainly_ not Wes's half-_loathing_ for their feelings._

_David changed direction at the last second, clamping on to Wes's vulnerable neck and _bit_—albeit not hard._

_Wes shattered in the water, coming completely apart as his eyelids flickered open in shock, head tilting away as David worked at his neck with teeth and tongue, suckling and nibbling right over Wes's pulse point. Heat scorched his skin and suddenly the water was _too_ hot. _

_When he was pretty sure he'd gotten his meaning across, David back slightly off his mark, admired the hicky for a moment before standing carefully. "Maybe just like this, Wes, but not _only_ like this."_

_Looking far less shaky than he felt, David strolled from the room without looking back, leaving Wes with dilated pupils and a large, glaring red mark painted on his neck._

* * *

><p>When Wes slips out of sleep, he finds the place David had left his mark still searing.<p>

_I'll murder him_, Wes promises himself calmly without moving. _There's no cover up on planet earth that will be able to hide this._

Snoring.

_What_.

Wes's eyes snap open with distinct déjà vu as the hospital comes sharply into focus. It's no more pleasant the second time around, though Wes thinks maybe he can work with this when he spots David asleep in the neighboring bed.

He nearly falls while scrambling out of the sheets as his shoulder protests the movement, and nearly notices the IV tube too late. He grabs it just in time to right it, but ends up knocking a vase with three wildflowers to the ground where it shatters.

_Glass breaking, shattering—everywhere in the snow in the hallways in the room with blood and __ice and__—_

It's very quiet there. Wes realizes that David isn't snoring anymore. He turns.

David's eyes are sleep-muddled and he's rubbing at his neck where no doubt an unpleasant crick is forming. When he figures out Wes is half-standing, though, the hand drops and his expression is one of earth-shattering relief.

Wes's heart gives a painful tug.

"Where did you go?" David croaks.

"Not very far. I never go very far."

David tilts his head in confusion and sits up minimally as Wes moves slowly towards him with that Look. It's a look he's never worn for David; for anyone. It's unique and raw; so undeniably _Wes_.

"You're acting differently," he manages to get out.

"I feel differently," Wes admits, gripping the bed railing having reached David and slowly eased himself down on the edge. "Or, not 'feeling differently'; I feel differently about feeling."

"Ah," David says semi-intelligently.

Wes looks at him with a tilted head. "You're acting differently too."

"Usually when we talk, it half feels like I'm coaxing you from running away from me," David laughs nervously, breaking off in hacking coughs. He emerges from it apologetically when Wes winces. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

A dismissive wave. "You seem really edgy," Wes observes, easing forward.

"I've spent forever wanted you; I don't know what to do with you now that I have you," David confesses breathlessly.

"I think—" Wes is closer than ever, eyes half-closed, "—you should…"

And David does.

Their lips meet in a tentative press that spends a few seconds simply being in awe of _being_ with each other like this before David's arms are brought up around Wes's hips and hang there loosely. Wes's fingers give his cheek a fragile touch.

And that's all they can manage before breaking apart, faces flushed with passion and unfamiliar coyness. They've known each other nothing short of forever and yet they know nothing about this side of each other at all.

Wes closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against David's. "This is so hard."

"I know."

They lay there for a while: they're hurting too much to do anything else. The throb in Wes's shoulder is just starting to push itself forwards as a priority when he hears voices outside the door.

"Is this Wesley Montgomery's room?" a deep male voice asks. He and David exchange apprehensive looks before gently detangling themselves with as much skin contact as possible before he hops back to bed.

"Yes," Wes hears Cruella tells him as Wes himself attempt to vault over his bed's railing. "He may be asleep though, Detective."

Wes barely has time to smooth the sheets around him before the door swings open again and a man with peppercorn hair and fingernails with yellowing cracks in them glides into the room sans Cruella's accompaniment. He moves quickly and talks even more so; when he introduces himself by name, Wes doesn't catch it. He doesn't really catch the next statement either, but David nods affirmative at Wes's other side, and Wes once more surrenders his own will to David's.

"Wesley… David," the detective began, pulling out a tape recorder and pressing a button, "this is… difficult." He pauses. "Let's start with this: Mr. Azimio has been hospitalized elsewhere under strict security to treat his wounds." A grimace suggests how highly he thinks of _that_. "He's being charged with counts of murder, attempted murder, kidnap, torture, trespassing—really we threw the book at him.

"Your classmates have given their statements, but there are things that they can't account for and times where one or both of you was or were out of the room. I'd like you to tell me what happened these last few days, if you think you can…?"

Wes doesn't want to hear this and definitely doesn't want to talk about this. "I don't see why this is necessary. You interviewed everyone else already."

"Yes," the detective allows, flipping through a police-issued notebook, "but a Mr. Thad Harwood informed me that if you hadn't shown up, instead of interviews I'd be 'checking off toe-tags in the morgue.'"

Wes sighs, pressing fisted hands to his lips. "Thad's alright? That's good…"

"They each mentioned you two at some point during their interviews. You made a very large impression."

"Look," David interrupts, and the other two do. By now he's sitting upright, propped up by pillows and looking very disturbed. "I'll tell you as much as I know from when I was out of the room. For a lot of it, Wes and I were… _together_. So I'll tell you."

"Alright," the detective agrees peaceably, placing the recorder on the small desk next to him. "You just… jump in if you want to, okay Wesley?"

"…I guess I realized something was weird when Wes wasn't back after class. He usually takes a long bath on Fridays, and we—" David cuts off, flushing; Wes flushes too. "Well, I just remembered that…"

David continues on through their night-and-day nightmare, glossing carefully over any moments that Wes knows that David knows that Wes would not hesitate to kill him for mentioning.

When it comes time to recount that awful moment when Azimio yanked Wes out of his arms, David stops. The detective obediently remains quiet for the fifty seconds David can't speak. "It's alright, David," he says after a full minute passes. "This is really tough. Take your time… Did Azimio say why he wanted Kurt and Wes?"

"Yeah—" David scrubs at his eyes hastily, ducking his head. "U-um—"

"Because Kurt has feelings for Blaine," Wes interrupts.

This is apparently new information to the detective, who scribbles it down without comment. "Okay, what about—"

"—And I have them for David," Wes sneers venomously. "So what?"

"Wesley, I don't—"

"There's no reason on this fucking planet for what that asshole did. So if you want to act like we did something to deserve this, you need to get the hell _out_."

A beat. Steadily: "The only way this matters is that you need to be prepared to be outted in the middle of a courtroom with half the nation's press staring at you if it comes to that."

And the world stopped.

"Excuse me."

* * *

><p>"<em>Mr. Montgomery, your son is displaying classic signs of antisocial behavior. It's very disturbing to see this in a child so young… even some marks of sociopat—"<em>

"_MY SON IS NOT A SOCIOPATH!"_

"_He's startlingly detached; the things he says sometimes—"_

"_YOU'VE SEEN HIM FOR TWO SESSIONS!"_

"_It took less than that to see that there is something… concerning."_

* * *

><p>Wes doesn't notice him go, but he notices when David breaks the ringing silence: "So. Is this it, then?"<p>

Wes sucks in air so fast he nearly chokes, sputtering and coughing desperately.

"Is this where you take back everything you just gave me?" David continues, ignoring the fact that Wes is practically drowning on air in front of him. It's one of the few times that he's looked so furiously at his—his _Wes_, but _oh_ each time he does it he makes it count. "YOU CAN'T KEEP YANKING ME AROUND, WES! What's _wrong_ with you?"

The other boy stiffens immediately; so_ detached, _such a_ sociopath, _an_ antisocial _and_ concerning—_

"—and now you're taking it all _bac_—!"

"I'M NOT TAKING IT BACK!"

David blinked, mouth going slack but still partially open making a floppy "o".

"All of us nearly _died_ today, David. And if you don't think I understand that, then you don't think very much of me at all. When I left—to find Jeff—and that _person_ got behind me—" Wes vomited out all the air in his lungs, dizzying himself by inhaling another fast breath— "when I thought I wasn't going to lose it to you—_that_ hurt, David."

"_Wes_," David said over him, horrified. "What the hell does tha—_what_ happened?"

"_Nothing_ happened! I'm trying to tell you that I LOVE YOU!"

The silence finally does what it's been threatening to since the beginning of the conversation by reaching deafening levels.

David finally lets out the breath he's been holding in a loud gush. "Wow."

"Wow," Wes echoes weakly into his palms. His entire face is bright pink. He looks like he might be violently sick at any minute.

"I do too, you know. Love you."

"I knew," Wes says simply, and yeah, he always did. "It's just, uh—" the growing pressure behind his eyes finally gives way, and tears are finally spilling down his cheeks, "—sometimes when we were—_there_—I… I remember thinking—" a half-strangled gasp for air, "—I could see… _any_ of these guys die, but uh… I'd trade them a-all away if you and I—"

"I _know_." David grips the bedframe, leaning precariously off the edge to stare brokenly at his… his _Wes_. "I felt that and—_fuck_—I'll always hate myself for that. But sometimes I just wanted him to…" he swallows, tears streaming thickly from his own eyes now. He lowers his voice wretchedly: "Just for him to take Kurt away… I just wanted it to be over and I didn't _care_—"

David breaks off, pressing his fists to his eyes.

Wes scrubs at his face, clearing his throat. "I _won't_ take it back. I'll tell them everything. If not for you, then for Kurt. Because I o-owe him that… I n-n-never want him to know what I was thinking."

David dips his head in acknowledgement.

They sit in desolate silence for a while.

With sudden violence outside intensive care, an explosion of action picks up.

The hallways echoed with it, and Wes thought he could hear Cruella in the hysterical mess—

"Get his head!"

"Insert the IV—!"

"We're _losing_ him!"

"No—_NO_! GIVE ME THE PADDLES!"

"STAND CLEAR!"

"…Call it."

* * *

><p><em>Dem European readers: I'm on your continent, shakin' meh fist.<em>

_Aurora_

_P.S: To reviewer who asked~ I WOULD LOVE SOME FANART! In fact, I may start salivating (which was probably more than you wanted to know). If I had fanart-I'D...! I'D HAVE FANART! OMG.  
><em>


End file.
